FARMING MATTERS: New stock bull
for the cows

Heather Jan Brunt

I don’t see much of my husband, so when he invited me to join him on a trip to Farthinghoe in Northamptonshire I jumped at the chance.

Our stock bull Max is moving on to another herd and we were off to check out a new Charolais bull for our suckler cows.

And boy did we find a good one. Horatio is a superb four-year-old with length, good fleshing, a fabulous temperament and a good calving record.

We viewed him in a pen with some of the cows he has already served, and his gorgeous chunky calves were also in there.

What better advert for him, than to see him with his progeny - he was calm, and they were calm as we walked amongst them, which was an important point in his favour.

It’s impossible to work with a stock bull that has a bad temperament. They have to be handled regularly and they are so incredibly massive it would be highly dangerous to have one with a bad attitude. In addition, he could pass that bad temperature on to his calves.

We weren’t really surprised that Horatio was so impressive, because we knew he had been bred by George Morris at Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire. We’ve had two of his bulls before and they both had all the positive attributes we saw in Horatio. Mr Morris is certainly to be praised for his excellent bulls.